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The Philosophy 

of 

American History 



WILLIAM P. GEST 



Philadelphia 
1900 



The Philosophy 

of 

American History 



WILLIAM P. GEST 



Philadelphia 
1900 






1(^784 



f[7^ry of C^^^««j 

I Tv/0 CohES Received 
"jUL 9 1900 

Copyright entry 
No.W.* 

SECOND COPY. 

0«UvM«d to 
ORDER OWISION, 
JUL 10J900_ 

64849 

Entered according to the Act of Congress 

in the year 1900 by 

WILLIAM P. GEST 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress 

at Washington 



The Philosophy of American History 

To Hegel of all philosophers is generally conceded 
the honor of having- made the best attempt to draw the 
phenomena of history into a philosophical theory. It 
was certainly his belief, and it became the boast of his 
disciples, that in his philosophy, all phenomena, history, 
as well as metaphysics, had been reduced to unity. It 
was no doubt largely due to this universality of system, 
as well as to his personal power as a teacher, that his 
Philosophy of History attained its unique reputation. 
In itself, as we have it in the notes of Gans, it is harsh, 
unbalanced, difficult to comprehend and full of the ir- 
regularities in which Hegel's own exuberant per- 
sonality disregarded the necessities of his system. 
But it is the weakness — perhaps the strength — of his 
philosophy to bend to the idiosyncrasies of those who 
profess it. This is certainly to be expected of 
a system whose categories are interchangeable. 
What agreement can be hoped for among those who 
argue of Freedom and Necessity, when Freedom and 
Necessity are Necessity and Freedom — the same de- 
luding spirit playing hide-and-seek with itself, each 
other and the investigator ? So we need not wonder 
that, after the personal authority of the master was 
removed, division arose between his followers. The 
dazzling stream of philosophy, which burst spon- 
taneously from his overpowering intellect, like a tor- 
rent from a snow-capped mountain, separated into two 



somewhat sluggish streams on which still sail many 
little boats, with mariners all stoutly maintainino- that 
they at all events are on the main river and nearing 
the ocean of truth. Indeed they claim to distinguish 
already the 

" Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." 

It is generally believed, however, that both branches, 
like Abana and Pharpar have lost themselves in the 
dust of the desert ; which usually happens, I believe, 
to streams that divide so near their source. 

The fundamental proposition of Hegel was that 
all thought moves from thesis, through antithesis, to 
synthesis ; from the positive, through the negative, to 
the absolute. History, being the phenomenon of 
Spirit revealing itself, is subject to the same law. 
History in general is the development of Spirit in 
Time, as Nature is the development of Spirit in 
Space. ^ 

The History of the World is none other than the 
progress of the consciousness of Freedom which 
develops according to the Necessity of its nature - 
Spirit is essentially the result of its own activity ; its 
activity is the transcending of its immediate simple 
existence, the negative of that existence and the 
returning into itself. The life of a people ripens a 
certain fruit ; its activity aims at the complete mani- 
festation of the principle which it embodies. But the 
fruit does not fall back into the bosom of the people 
that produced and matured it ; oji the co7itrary it 
becomes a poison draught to it. That poison draught 
it caniiot let alone, for it has an insatiable thirst for 

' Hegel : Pliilos. of History, trans. Sibree, 75. 
^ Id., p. ly. 



//; the taste of the draught is its annihilation, 
though at the some time the rise of a new principle?" 
Death is the issue of Life and Life also the issue 
of Death. The Phcenix was a type of the law of 
N'ature. Spirit, on the other hand, does not merely 
pass into another envelope or rise rejuvenescent from 
the ashes of its previous form ; it comes forth exalted, 
glorified, a purer Spirit. It certainly makes war on 
itself; but in its very destruction exalts that existence 
to a new grade, ^ The life of the Spirit is thus a circle 
of progressive embodiments, the goal of which is the 
complete development of Spirit.^ The essence of Spirit 
is Freedom, by which is meant Freedom both from 
outward control and inward passion.^ A nation is 
moral, virtuous, vigorous, while it is engaged in realiz- 
ing its grand objects, and defends its work against 
external violence during the process. The contra- 
diction between its potential, subjective being and its 
actual being is removed ; the result having been 
attained, the activity displayed by the Spirit of the 
people is no longer needed. Then a mere customary 
life without supreme interest brings on natural death ; 
and though the nation may continue in being there- 
after, it is an existence without intellect or vitality, 
having no need of its institutions because the need of 
them is satisfied, — a political nullity and tedium. In 
order that a truly universal interest may arise, the 
Spirit of a people must advance to the adoption of 
some new purpose ; but whence can this new purpose 
originate ? It would be a higher, more comprehensive 

3 IiL, p. 82. 
^ Id., p. 76. 

5 /</.,p82. 

" //., Introd. ; p. xi, iS. 



conception of itself, a transcending of its principle ; 
but this very act would involve a new National 
Spirit." 

These ideas were not essentially original with 
Hegel. Re-action as a necessary element of history 
has been discussed since the time of Plato, and the 
conception of the necessary antithesis in thought had 
been made familiar by Fichte. The universality of 
Hegel's system, however, resulted in the transference 
of the antithesis from the field of metaphysics to that of 
history, and thereby the " thought process " necessarily 
became a "time-process." We need not discuss the 
consistency or inconsistency of this. Hegel's for- 
mulae applied to the practical treatment of events 
seem like the quantities of mathematics which become 
imaginary when projected into a different plane. 
There may, however, be a useful analogy which can 
be applied practically without implying the identity of 
the processes. The imaginary quantities may work 
out into tangible results. 

Vico also, in his theories of the merging of poetical 
wisdom into occult wisdom, and of the progress of 
positive law towards the natural law of reason and the 
sentiment of Justice infused by God, was not far from 
Hegel's " Progress of the Idea" and the "justification 
of God in history." But no one up to Hegel's time 
had developed such theses so symmetrically or illus- 
trated them so brilliantly with the light of history. 

Hegel in his lectures paid little attention to 
America, and indeed we might infer that he had only 
the most general ideas of her significance in history. 
He dismisses America as the land of the future with 

' /(/. , p. 78. The above abstract is mainly in the words of Hegel or Sibree, 
the translator. See Philosophy of History in Bohn's Philos. Library. 



a few somewhat contemptuous pages. What takes 
place in America, he says, is but an emanation from 
Europe. The surplus population of Europe went to 
America in much the same way as many persons es- 
caped from the old Imperial Cities, where guilds were 
dominant and trade stereotyped. The relation be- 
tween North America and Europe was therefore not 
unlike that of Altona to Hamburg.^ The funda- 
mental character of the American community was the 
endeavor of the individual after gain, the preponder- 
ance of private interest devoting itself to that of the 
community only for its own advantage. There were 
certainly legal relations, a formal code of laws ; but re- 
spect for law existed apart from genuine probity, and 
American merchants commonly lay under the im- 
putation of dishonest dealings under legal protection. 
As to religion, the splitting up into sects had reached 
the acme of absurdity, many sects having a form of 
worship consisting in convulsive movements and some- 
times in the most sensuous extravagances. This com- 
plete freedom was developed to such a degree that the 
various conereeations chose ministers and dismissed 
them according to their absolute pleasure. As to 
the political condition of North America, the general 
object of the existence of the State was not yet fixed 
or determined, and the necessity for a firm combma- 
tion did not exist ; for a real state arises only after a 
distinction of classes has arisen, when wealth and 
poverty become extreme. But America was exempt 
from this pressure and the chief source of discontent 
being removed the continuation of the existing civil 
condition is guaranteed. North America will only be 

8 Id., p. 86. 



comparable with Europe after its immeasurable space 
has been occupied and the members of the political 
body shall have begun to be pressed back on each 
other. America is the Land of the Future where, in 
the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world's 
history shall reveal itself, perhaps in a contest between 
North and South America. It is for America to aban- 
don the ground on which hitherto the History of the 
World has developed itself. '-^ 

Such were the reflections with which He^el dis- 

o 

missed the new world and her dreams. As a land of 
the future it had no lessons for the student of history. 
Yet in our country itself there was from the beeinnino- 
a, consciousness that America was fulfilling and would 
fulfill more widely and deeply than any other nation 
the destiny which Hegel claims as the aim of history. 
Nowhere had the spectacle of the Spirit of Freedom 
struggling to realize itself been so clearly displayed 
before the world, and nowhere had political action 
been so expressly laid on political philosophy. The 
opening words of the Declaration are remarkable for 
this. They claim at once for the Revolution a neces- 
sary place in the continuous progress of mankind ; 
they declare it to be an attempt to realize the laws of 
Nature and of Nature's God ; that is, in Hegelian lan- 
guage, the reahzation of spirit in the development of 
Freedom : 

' ' When in the course of human events it becomes necessary 
for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have con- 
nected them with another, and to assume among the powers of 
the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of 
Nature and of Nature' s God entitle them, a decent respect to 
the opinions of fnankind requires that they should declare the 
causes which impel them to the separation." 
9 Id. , p. 86-90. 



And, aorain : 

" We hold * * * that whenever any form of government 
becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people 
to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its 
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such 
form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and 
happiness. " 

The author of the Declaration would, also, no 
doubt, have defined a dead state in somewhat the 
same terms as have been quoted from Hegel ; for this 
is evidently what he meant by those much reviled 
words : 

' ' God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such 
a rebellion (as Shay's). What signify a few lives lost in a cen- 
tury or two ? The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the 
blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. "^^ 

This is as cruel a sentence as any Hegel wrote of 
his " cunning spirit."^^ But it is as if he would say, 
progress depends on revolution, for liberty necessi- 
tates government : " the natural progress of things is 
for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. "- 
Then tyranny incites revolution ; after revolution new 
liberty begins the succession de novo. But for the 
nation too inert to revolt there is no future but tyranny 
or death. 

The names of Hegel and Jefferson seem to imply 
nothing in common, and it may well be something of a 
surprise to find any similarity between the political 
theories of men who stood as far apart in the world of 
thought as in the world of action. Jefferson was a 
man of the new world, Hegel emphatically a man of 

'" LeUer to Col. W. S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787. Jeff. Wks., II, 31S. 

'• Hegel's Philos. of History, p. 34. 

^'^ Jefferson to Carrington, May 27, 17S8. Jeft". Wks., II, i\0^. 



the old world. One was an active, ardent patriot, the 
other was unstirred by the cannon of the invader ; one 
a revolutionist, the other an apologist for absolutism. 
Jefferson was a natural reformer, Hegel doubted if the 
English reforms of 1831 would leave the possibility of 
a government. The statesman would decentralize the 
state, the philosopher deified the state. What the 
enthusiastic American deprecated with ardor the 
philosophic German describes with the sedateness of 
general terms. "The particular," says Hegel, "is 
for the most part of too trifling value as compared 
with the general ; individuals are sacrificed and 
abandoned, "^^ 

The two expressions are as near alike as can be 
expected from two men, one of whom hated metaphy- 
sics and loved the people, the other of whom loved 
metaphysics and hated the people. However, all that 
is here insisted on is that the words of the philosophic 
Jefferson, speaking as the mouthpiece of the Free Spirit 
of America, fairly infer a theory of the continuous devel- 
opment of liberty by successive revolutions, and may 
well be c[uoted in support of more than one of Hegel's 
theories. Whatever may be thought of this, it will not 
now be seriously denied that the development of 
freedom in America had advanced too far in. Hegel's 
time and had followed too significant a method to be 
ignored by any student of history. This was pres- 
ently to be made evident to Europe by deTocqueville, 
who landed in America in the year that Hegel died 

(1831). 

Hegel, consciously or not, had other reasons for 
belittling the progress of America. He had com- 

'■' Hegel's I'hilos. of History, p. 34. 

10 



pleted his system without her. For there is indeed in 
Hegel's appHcation of his theory to the facts of 
history — perhaps we should say his application of the 
facts of history to his theory — a sort of implication 
that the cycle of history is ended. "The East knew 
and knows only that one is Free ; the Greek and 
Roman world that some are Free ; the German world 
knows that all are Free."^^ Hegel's classification of 
historic data left no room for the "Land of the 
Future." But there was perhaps another reason. 
Hegel's philosophy, like all systems that deify neces- 
sity, by whatever name they choose to call it, becomes 
the argument of despotism. Imperialism has always 
justified itself by fatalistic philosophy. Napoleon 
believed in himself as the child of Fate, and Hegel 
deified the conqueror of his country under the name 
of the "World Soul."^'^ It is a just criticism of the 
tendencies of his system that, optimism, hero worship, 
acquiescence in might as right and the necessity of 
war are suggested to be profound historical truths. ^"^ 
So Napoleon III, taking his cue from his prede- 
cessor, claimed that Providence raised up such saviors 
of society as Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon.-^^ 
Among democratic nations a similar justification of 
imperialism is found in the fatalistic theory of the des- 
tiny of the superior race. They are in a special sense 
the chosen of God ; of which the true criterion is the 
ordeal of battle. This is the modern judicial duel, 
as clearly fatalistic as the ancient legal wager of battle 
or the more modern fatalism of the divine right of 

'* Id., p. wo. 

'■' Franke, Social Forces in German Literature, p. 541. 

i« Flint, Philos. Hist. (1874), p. 52S. 

'" Id., p. 566. 

11 



kino-s. No doubt the tendency is as old as govern- 
ment, and there will never be wanting poets of 
imperialism to echo the words of Euripides that 
tyranny is god-like."^ 

. These considerations suecest a number of reasons 
why Hegel's prejudices would dissuade him from 
applying his philosophy to a country, where seventy 
years ago, the State still meant the People, and Liberty 
had not become Necessity. Seeing little to admire in 
America, Hegel, as many lesser men have done when 
a fact will not suit their theory, belittled and derided 
it. The antinomies of American history were not then 
sufficiently developed to enable an observer to trace 
the action of the Hegelian law, and the detailed con- 
sideration of America as a democracy would therefore 
have been as distracting to the rhythm of his dialectics, 
as disturbing to the serenity of his politics. 

But if in Hegel's time the position and aim of 
America seemed new and vague, the eventsof the last 
sixty or seventy years have given them a definiteness 
and determination which may well offer many tests for 
his theory. To apply them in full to the complicated 
currents of thought and action in America would task 
even Hegel's ingenuity, but the possibilities of such 
an attempt may be readily sketched. Let us then see 
how far the History of the United States supports the 
theorem that Liberty in creating its forms necessarily 
turns upon itself and dies, thereby producing a new 
Liberty of higher grade. 

This may be done without committing ourselves 
to the belief that liberty is the sole aim of history. 
Order may be conceived of as being that aim equally 

18 Plato Rep. VIII, 568. 



with liberty and complementary to it. The objects 
of the Constitution, as recited in the preamble, include 
the insuring of tranquility as well as the securing- of 
the blessings of liberty. 

The subject may be considered by looking at the 
form or at the spirit that creates the form. The basis 
of tree Government is the electorate, so that we may 
tor convenience divide the subject into 

A. I. The Electoral Forms. 

2. The Governmental Forms. 

B. I. The spirit of the People, as shown in their 
attitude, towards certain political rights. 

2. The progress of the free Spirit as shown 
by America's Wars. 

I. (a) The Electoral College was a remarkable 
attempt to perpetuate a deliberate or rational Spirit of 
Freedom in an elective body. It was elaborately con- 
ceived, carefully worked out, and was, in the words of 
Hamilton/^ " almost the only part of the system which 
escaped without severe censure, or which received the 
slightest mark ot approbation from its opponents." 

It w^as thought to be "pretty well guarded" — and 
so it was from intrusion from abroad. But the Spirit 
of Freedom must not only be preserved from outward 
attack ; it must be preserved from itself. As an 
endeavor to maintain a system of rational free choice 
it was a failure almost from the beoinnino-. This is 
too well known to need citation here, further than to 
show that one of the most careful and wisest endeavors 
of the Constitution failed the earliest, and that this was 
because it could not fortify itself against the will of the 
changing spirit that created it. It is amusing now to 
read the hopeful words of Hamilton on the device : 

'•' Fed., LXVII. 

13 



" Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the 
immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the 
task free from any sinister bias (1) Their transient existence 
and their detached situation afford a satisfactory prospect of 
their continuing so at the conclusion of it. The business of 
corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of 
men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found 
easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be 
over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon 
motives, which, though they could not properly be denomi- 
nated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from 
their duty." 

The formalization of the Electoral College has 
been approved as a step towards democracy. But its 
decay went even further, and having failed in 1876 
even to register the will of the people, it was succeeded 
or supplied by the extra-constitutional Electoral Com- 
mission. This was assuredly a step beyond democ- 
racy. The form had failed, and had been turned 
against the Liberty that created it. 

(b) It must not be expected that all forms fail in 
equal periods. We may expect any time to find them 
in various stages of petrification. The Electoral Col- 
lege is an example of one quite fossilized. The next 
example of electoral form furnished by the Constitu- 
tion is election by State Legislatures. The hardening 
process by which freedom is being destroyed here is 
more recent, and is even now progressing. The 
reasons that led to the adoption of the method whereby 
Senators were to be elected by legislatures were some- 
what similar to those which produced the electoral 
college. 

The principal objects aimed at in the qualifica- 
tions of Senators and the method of their choice were 
extent of mformation and stability of character in the 

14 



members, as well as a conservatism which should act 
as a check on inconsiderate action by the House. -° 

The first of these objects could only be obtained 
as long as the essentials of freedom remained in the 
electing body. But it is essential to freedom that the 
choice should be delihei'atc, a really representative and 
rational act of the Spirit of Freedom. It is notorious 
that for some years the system has not satisfactorily 
fulfilled the praise of the Federalist as favoring a 
" select appointment." Party spirit has overcome the 
freedom of the elector, and the legislative election is 
seen to be following in the train of the Electoral Col- 
leofe. It has even assumed in some cases the exact 
formality, and candidates run for the Legislature on 
the platform of being pledged for such a Senator or 
against such a Senator. 

The second of the objects of the Senate has been 
largely realized until recent years, but it has lately 
been found that even this can no longer be relied on. 
Occasions have not been wanting and are too well 
known to need citation, when the conservatism has 
been rather in the House of Representatives than in 
the Senate. This necessarily follows the lowering of 
the standard of appointment. Conservatism depends 
largely on independence, responsibility and freedom 
from party spirit. If both Senate and House are gov- 
erned by the same spirit of party the basis of the 
check is gone. It will be believed by many that so 
much of a conservative check as may remain in 
the upper house is due rather to the length of 
tenure of the Senators than to their character as 
statesmen. Speaking of the benefit of public stabil- 

-'" Federalist, LX[., page 429, etc. 

15 



ity, which the Senate was supposed to guard, Ham- 
ilton said : -^ 

" Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable 
advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising and the 
moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed man of the 
people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or reve- 
nue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species 
of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the 
change and can trace its consequences, a harvest not reared by 
themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their 
fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be 
said, with some truth, that ' laws are made for the few, not for 
the many.' " 

So that we see the change in the Senate has 
brought into power the very ones to profit by the con- 
dition it was constituted to prevent, and Hamil- 
ton's words may be read without a change as a denun- 
ciation of the Senate as it now stands in the public eye. 

Other effects of the change in the spirit of legisla- 
tive election upon the character of the Senate will be 
more logically considered presently under the forms 
of crovernment. 

(c) The popular electorate is the third and prin- 
cipal form in which it was intended that the American 
people should preserve their liberty. It is unquestion- 
able that the right of suffrage is not now looked upon 
with the complacency and confidence of former times ; 
yet this could hardly be if its results have not failed. 
Many never exercise it, many exercise it carelessly, 
many have a contempt for it, many more are ready to 
say it has failed. 

There is a great difference between being poten- 
tially free and actually free. Actual civil liberty depends 

•-' Fed., LXI, p. 435. 

16 



not only on free governmental or electoral forms, but 
the free exercise of free forms and of all those forms. 
No people can, therefore, be actually free unless they 
participate in the ground forms of their freedom. The 
individual must not only vote, but he must determine 
the question on which he wishes to vote. The early 
colonists, who knew what the spirit of freedom was, 
seem to have understood this. The first ground form 
of colonial history was the primary assembly. As 
population increased the primary assembly became 
impracticable, and the change to the representative 
assembly was clearly a step in the direction of 
rational freedom. The freeholders of Rhode Island 
and Maryland, who still insisted on going to the 
assembly themselves, make a picture quite refreshing 
to a time when not a tenth of our citizens have ever 
seen their State Legislatures in session.-'- If the vote 
was now the basis of our governmental forms, a free 
participation in it would be a practical realization of 
freedom. But it is no longer that basis ; a system 
of party machinery, of primary elections, and con- 
ventions has crystalized around the former system and 
has strangled it. Still, if all took part in those primary 
forms the people would be in a fair way to exercise a 
free right of suffrage. But they have renounced the 
ri^ht of choosinor their candidates, their issues or their 
platforms. These are chosen for them by self-con- 
stituted groups of men known as politicians. Indeed 
even the primary election is not what in form it should 
be, for it is neither primary nor free. It is the under- 
standing, and under the party rules it is frequently the 
condition, of participation therein, that one who attends 

'" Wilson, The State, ss., 136. 

17 



the primary election is pledged in advance to support 
its action. A free voter is therefore disfranchised from 
joining in the fundamental elective form. In this 
respect the newly legalized primary election more 
truly represents the public mind than the older and 
freer form which it is helping to subvert. The 
ground form of our liberty, the fount of freedom, from 
which our stream of liberty Hows — the real primary 
election — is now nothing else than the will of the lead- 
ing politicians. Not without reason are they called 
"leaders." There are national leaders and state 
leaders and ward leaders. They control the neces- 
saries of life — our water, our light, our highways. 
They are the real forces that make our laws, choose 
our judges and tax our property. All depositaries of 
irresponsible power show the same tendencies. Our 
modern politicians have become the exponents in the 
nineteenth century of the royal and courtly character- 
istics of the seventeenth, of which they display all of 
the harm and none of the charm. As a class they 
have become distinct from the people. They divert 
the public funds, they protect prostitution, they 
obstruct the course of justice. Like the princes of 
the ancient regime, they have their favorites, their 
flatterers, their "loyal" retainer^, for whom they 
exploit the people. Their power, like that of their 
earlier analoo^ues, has been a sfradual crrowth. These 
politicians are not without honor ; on the contrary, 
like the gentry that preceded them, they have a code 
of their own. They are probably not without their 
use. They may some time be recognized to have 
been in a way the organizers, as the capitalists are 
in their way the conservators of wealth. For the cun- 

18 



ning spirit of progress closes her eyes to their method 
in order that she may seize and scatter their accumu- 
lations with generous hand among a future generation. 

So far have these methods prevailed that in our 
cities, our states, our nation, we have politics, scarcely 
government. For government implies a gubernator, 
a helmsman, a course, skill, principle. 

II. Rational free choice therefore has been retained 
in none of the forms of the electorate in America. 
We may next consider this on the forms of govern- 
ernment itself. 

Here we observe immediately a radical difference 
between the development of the Executive and that of 
the Legislature and Judiciary and a gradual but con- 
stant encroachment of the first upon the others. It 
will, therefore, best be considered after them. 
I. The Senate. 

The failure of the Senate to fulfill the expectation 
of a select appointment is due in large measure to its 
failure to fulfill one of its principal functions as a 
branch of the Government :— the equipoise between 
equal federated States. For many of the States cre- 
ated out of the Western territories had no claim to 
statehood outside of the demand of party politics. 
They were not and could not be made properly 
co-ordinate with the older States. This was largely 
the result of the Mexican War, and it was this danger 
that made the greatest constitutional lawyer of his day 
an anti-expansionist. Webster clearly foresaw the 
degradation of the Senate from this cause. He regarded 
the question as "vital, permanent, elementaryln the 
future prosperity of the country and the maintenance 
of the Constitution." He wished the people to be 



19 



allowed to vote on it so that the breaking down of the 
Constitution should be their work. It is certainly 
clear now that the extension of territory after the 
Mexican War involved, not only the contest over 
slavery, but also the destruction of the relation 
between the two branches of the legislative depart- 
ment. 

" To the argument that Congress might be trusted not to 
make new States until they had suitable population, Mr. Web- 
ster replied : ' that the purposes of party would govern the 
whole matter ; that what had been done in the case of Texas 
would be done again ; that when the new Senators were 
wanted for any particular purpose they would be made, and 
that the year 1850 would witness what he then foretold.'-^ 
' I think^ I see,' he said, ' a course adopted which is likely to 
turn the Constitution of the land into a deformed monster, 
into a curse instead of a blessing, in fact, a frame of unequal 
government, not founded on popular representation, not 
founded on equality, but on the grossest inequality, and I think 
this process will go on, or that there is danger that it will go 
on, until this Union shall fall to pieces.' " 

How exactly part of this fear has been fulfilled-^ 
and how nearly it was all fulfilled are now matters of 
history. 

An important function which it was intended the 
Senate should exercise in a free and deliberate spirit 
was the confirmation of appointments. But it is 
notorious " that senatorial scrutiny has not proved 
effectual for securing the proper constitution of the 
public service. "''' What is known as the courtesy of 
the Senate is not merely a neglect of duty but a 
renunciation of finictiou. It is in effect an alteration 
of the constitutional scheme and a delegation to the 

^^ Curtis' Life of Webster, II, 325. 
''■^ California was admitted in 1S50. 
2^ Woodrow Wilson, The State, s., 1330. 

20 



Senators of a single State of the prerogative of a delib- 
erative body. In the words of Prof. Wilson, it has 
frequently threatened to add to the improper motives 
of the Executive, the equally improper motives of the 
Senate.2*5 The point here, however, is not that it 
works badly but that the freedom of consent has been 
renounced, that the right of consent is not fulfilled in 
the spirit of liberty, but that liberty has destroyed itself 
into a form. 

2. Passing from the Senate to the House, we 
observe a more evident surrender of the free right of 
legislation. The immediate cause of this has been, as 
in the case of the Senate, the increase of territory of 
the country and the consequent increase in member- 
ship of the House. At the outset of the Government 
the number of Representatives was 65. This was 
criticized as too small, and the writer of the Federal- 
ist, No. 54,-" would have admitted the objection 
to have great weight, except that the number would 
be augmented from time to time. However as to the 
necessity of a great number, he said : 

" In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character 
composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. 
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian 
assembly would still have been a mob." 

Since then the House has grown until it has 357 
members'-' not every one a Socrates. 

It is, of course, known to everyone that the House 

itself gives little attention to business. Its sessions 

are occupied with politics, manoeuvering for position, 

the endeavor to show that the other side is wrong, 

-'« /,/. 

''■' Page 386, Variously accredited. 

2' Johnson Am. Pol., p. 361, apportionment of 1S91. 



21 



speeches intended for' constituents, etc. The real 
business is deleo-ated to committees, and the com- 
mittees' reports become the measures of the majority 
and are put through under the party lash. The House 
has no time for rational consideration. This was fore- 
told long ago by Mr. Archer, of Virginia, during debate 
on the Wilmot proviso, in a remarkable prophesy which 
Is worth citing here for more than one reason :^'' 

" But there was another view that was just as absolutely 
imperative on his mind as that at which he had only just 
glanced. It was the introduction of the question, which would 
come after the acquisition of new territory. Had they, he 
enquired, become absolutely insane with this rapid appetite 
for territorial acquisition ? What was the superficial extent of 
the United States ? Had gentlemen passed their minds over 
it ? Did any man suppose that there would be no difficulty in 
carrying out this problem of a free government without further 
acquisition, as our population increased ? The House of Rep- 
resentatives, now (1848) with 228 members, found it necessary 
to adopt the ' one hour rule ' in debate ; but when we became 
a population of one hundred millions, as it had been calcu- 
lated we soon should, it would be necessary to adopt a ' minute 
rule ' and then everything would be done out of doors, 
nothing more than the mere forms of deliberation remaining ; 
and we shall become the most corrupt government ever seen in 
the world. And did any man doubt, if they passed appro- 
priation, that the struggle on the question of slavery would 
come? Let honorable Senators read the resolutions which 
have already been presented from eight or nine States of this 
Union, expressing their inflexible purpose to exclude slavery 
from all territory that may hereafter be acquired. And he had 
information that resolutions had passed one branch of the 
Legislature of Virginia, and were expected to pass the other, 
in which language was used which showed that the people of 
his State were prepared for resistance to the determination of 
the free States. It was evident, then, that the passage of this 

'^^ Quoted from Curtis' Life of Webster, II, 307. 



bill would minister to the dissentions of the States, and if they 
were to subscribe a paper, declaring their purpose to be to 
produce such a calamity, it would be no more apparent than 
by the passage of this bill. It was lamentable to think of the 
consequences to result, which would be either the overthrow 
of this Union, or the infusion into the veins of the body politic 
of a poison that would make it unworthy of preservation." 

The exact method by which " everything would 
be done out of doors " is not here foretold. It has now- 
been formulated in the Committee on Rules and the 
power of the Speaker. While the House remained a 
deliberate body the personnel of the committee could 
not absolutely determine legislation. But now that 
the House has renounced its right of debate, the 
Speaker has become the actual arbiter of legislation. 
He chooses those who make legislation, and as Chair- 
man of the Committee on Rules and presiding officer 
of the House, he has almost absolute control of the 
course of business. Any one who opposes the course 
determined will not be " recognized. "^° That is, the 
right of a representative to represent his constituents 
and to speak his or their sentiments to the House is 
virtually annulled. Legislation by representatives is 
at an end, and has been succeeded by legislation ot 
committees under the control of parties, 

3. It is remarkable that our national deliberate 
bodies show a progressive decadence according to their 
closeness to the people ; the nearer to the people, the 
quicker and more complete the decay. The Electoral 
College elected by direct vote for a single purpose has 
become a mere machine ; the House of Representatives 
elected for general duties and for a term of years 
reaches the mechanical stage more slowly ; the Senate, 

»o Cf., Wilson, The State, 1293. 

23 



chosen by the legislatures and not by the people, for 
longer terms than our representatives and not all at 
the same time, still preserves a greater measure of 
independence. The Supreme Court until comparatively 
recent years has been thought above any consideration 
but a free exercise of its judicial functions. But the 
reconstruction of that Court in order to reverse the 
leofal tender decision demonstrated the ease with which 
it also can be made to give up its freedom at the de- 
mand of party or of the executive. Since then it has 
become fully understood that the same method may be 
used again to amend the Constitution extra-consti- 
tutionally, so as to allow a progressive income tax or 
other unconstitutional radical measures. At the 
same time the partisan voting of the judges upon the 
Electoral Commission has convinced the people that 
even without a reconstruction the members of that 
Court are not free from the bias of party. 

4. When we turn to the Executive we find that as 
the other departments have renounced their rights of 
freedom, the President has increased his prerogative. 
It would here take too long to go over the history of 
this growth. It is in part recited in Prof. Simon E. 
Baldwin's recent book on " Modern Political Institu- 
tions " under the title of " Absolute Power, an Ameri- 
can Institution." The additional or doubtful powers 
of the President have been from time to time granted 
or acceded to by Congress. The right of removal, the 
rio-ht to recognize or to decline to recocjnize foreig-n 
ministers, the riofht to call out the militia, are all illus- 
trations of this. The present generation has seen 
arrests without process, and the habeas cor pits act sus- 
pended. The Supreme Court has subpoenaed a Presi- 

24 



dent, but has never enforced any process against him. 
But one President was ever impeached, and "it is safe 
to say none will ever be convicted," He has become 
superior to Congress as to the Supreme Court. The 
balance of power being destroyed, he has thus become 
superior to the Constitution. Jefferson's position that 
a strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one 
of the high duties of the Executive, but not the high- 
est^^ has been the uniform practice of the Executive. 
Jefferson himself followed it in the Louisiana Purchase, 
and justified also on this ground the preparation for 
war after the Chesapeake affair.^" In war the Consti- 
tution, it is frequently stated, is suspended, and there 
is then no will but that of the Commander-in-Chief. 
And the President practically can make war. In war 
the President may proclaim all slaves free or make a 
compact protecting slavery. These things are not 
laws, they are facts. The present Congress has wil- 
linoflv left the entire management of the war ao-ainst 
the Philippinos to the President, as in the Spanish war 
it voted fifty millions of dollars at once to be expended 
at his will. In the words of an able newspaper writer 
" Congress has abdicated." 

Though the Executive cannot constitutionally 
declare war in form, he can declare that war already 
exists, and order the army forward. So President Polk 
moved troops into the disputed territory and started 
the Mexican War. So President McKinley, without 
Congress, determined by his proclamation of Decem- 
ber, 1898, his policy toward the Philippines and started 
the Philippine War. 

■" Letter to J. B. Culvin, 9/20/iSio. 
■"■' Id. 

25 



Two Presidents have risked war with France, and 
one very recently with England. The fact is that 
directly or indirectly the President can carry forward 
anything he wishes, from the suppression of a riot to a 
war of conquest. 

Some of the above examples are given by Prof. 
Baldwin, but all will not aoree with him that the abso- 
lutism of the President has made him the great " con- 
servative " force in our constitutional system. There 
is but one force in that system which remains conser- 
vative, and that is the Supreme Court. Can the Vene- 
zuela message, for instance, be considered in any point 
of view as the act of a conservative ? And if we are 
to be reminded that the Presidents have been "all 
good men," let us not forget that in the electoral col- 
lege of 1801 Burr had an equal vote with Jefferson. 

The facts that the increasingly despotic nature of 
our government has not yet produced any vast and 
direct usurpation of power, and that it does not tyran- 
nize in the ways of ancient tyrants cannot hide the 
reality of such absolute power. The prophecy of de 
Tocqueville on this point was remarkable in its descrip- 
tion of the despotism that would most likely grow 
from democracy. 

"I think," he said, " that the species of oppression by 
which- democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that 
ever before existed in the world." (Vol. II., p. 391.) 

He then goes on to describe it as a monarchy, 
centralized in its powers, paternal in its method, ener- 
vating in its effects. The tutelary power would be 
"absolute, minute, regular, provident, mild" (p. 392). 
And it would now seem that this is in process of reali- 
zation. Although the Czar of Russia is the only auto- 

26 



crat to which the President of the United States is com- 
parable, the despotism of America will not be like the 
fierce and gloomy despotism of Russia. At least it 
will not be fierce at first. The ancient commonwealth 
of the Frogs passed from a loose democracy to the 
mild despotism of King Log. The bloody dynasty of 
the Stork was introduced later. The coup cTctat was 
undertaken under the auspices of Jupiter, or manifest 
Destiny ; /. e., to the Stork, Providence, to the Frogs, 
Fate. 

But for how long a period such a despotism will 
confine itself to mildness must remain doubtful until 
the event. There is a widespread opinion among 
those most competent to judge that human nature 
does not change much from age to age, and that the 
future will show it sdll subject to the temptations before 
which it has fallen in the past. It may be interesting 
to quote such an opinion from the second in this des- 
potic line, him who had signed the most despotic of all 
federal laws up to that time. 

" The fundamental article of my political creed (so wrote 
John Adams in 1815) is that despotism or unlimited sover- 
eignty, or absolute power is the same in a majority of a 
popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical 
junto and a single emperor, equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody 
and in every respect diabolical."*' 

It adds a further interest to this opinion that long 
before the event Adams had prophesied that the cost 
of the French Revolution would be a million lives. 

III. We have now seen that Liberty has vanished 
or is vanishing out of the electoraP and governmental 
forms of the United States. But lest it should be said 

^•' Adams to Jefterson, Jefterson's Wks., VI., 500. 

27 



that it is the form that has failed and not the spirit 
that has changed, we will proceed to examine the atti- 
tude of the people towards some of the more important 
doctrines in which their early love of liberty was mani- 
fested. For if the theorem of Hegel contains the truth 
of history it is the spirit that must fatally return upon 
itself 

I. At the inception of our government, expatria- 
tion was considered one of the " indefeasible rights of 
man." By Jefferson it was stated to be a natural right 
" like one's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness." The evidence of it, he thought, was not 
left to the feebler and sophisticated investigations of 
reason, but was impressed on the sense of every man. 
The part of the Virginia Code of 1876 recognizing the 
right was drawn by him '■^K The right of expatriation 
is involved in the privilege of naturalization, of which 
the Constitution empowered Congress to pass a uni- 
form rule ^^ The right of choosing one's country and 
allegiance became the settled doctrine of the United 
States. According to Mr. Lecky, the American Govern- 
ment in 1868, in a treaty with China asserted "the 
inherent and inalienable right of man to change his 
alleo^iance."'^'' 

This is particularly interesting now that China is 
the only country whose citizens are excluded alto- 
gether. The earlier view of freedom is well illustrated 
in Lowell's description of America in the " Com- 
memoration Ode "•"' 

^* Jefferson's Wks , VII , 73. 

^^ Constitution, Art. I., 98. 

^® Lecky Demociacy and Liberty, II., 460. 

'■^'' 1865, Lowell's Wks. X., p. 30. Quoted also by Mr. Lecky. 

28 



" She that lifts up the manhood of the poor. 

She of the open soul and open door; 

With room about her hearth for all mankind." 

Since then laws have been passed largely in 
deference to the "labor vote" excluding laborers 
brought over on contract, those convicted of any 
except political crimes, and other persons. America 
has no room about her hearth for Chinamen, immi- 
grants without money, cripples or any person who is 
assisted to come (except by friends or relatives). 
These together with all skilled laborers broucrht over 
on contract, idiots and lunatics are now sent back at 
the expense of the steamship companies. If an 
unfortunate immigrant becomes a pauper in twelve 
months after landing he is to be sent back, too, (Sect. 1 1 , 
Act. Mch. 3, 1 891). The growth of nationality, the 
protective system and the increase of population have 
absolutely shattered the fine theory of expatriation 
and naturalization. 

2. Another set of ideas redolent of liberty cluster 
about the phrase, "liberty of the subject," or " liberty 
of person." Their spirit is exemplified in Art. VI 
of the Bill of Rights. This included the right of 
one criminally accused to a speedy and public trial, 
by an impartial jury, in a district ascertained by law, 
and to be confronted by witnesses with assist- 
ance of counsel. It is notorious that a system has 
grown up in police-administration entirely at variance 
with this. "The 5th degree" and the "sweat-box" 
are terms now well known to the public. They mean 
that prior to trial, without counsel, in a private room, 
the accused is put through a series of examinations 
and threats to trap him into confession of guilt, or to 

29 



make evidence incriminating himself. This is not con- 
ducted by a judicial officer, and in this respect is worse 
than the preliminary hearing before a juge d' instrtu- 
tion in France ; to which, indeed, it bears considerable 
resemblance. It proceeds on somewhat the same 
theory. It is the maxim of a free country that a man 
is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty. It is 
the maxim, as it is the practice, of a despotic govern- 
ment, or of a police-administered country, that a man 
is presumed to be guilty until he proves himself inno- 
cent. Like the party system, which is destroying the 
freedom of our constitution, the practice grows up 
outside of law, until it is more powerful. This has 
not yet made much disturbance in the public mind, 
because the public mind does not care much for free- 
dom in reality, and is busy about other things ; and, 
also, because the illegality is generally practiced 
against criminals, the poor and the helpless. Similar 
examples of the autocratic methods of the police may 
be found in the "raid," — the arrest without warrant, 
upon the order of a police official, of which our news- 
papers give frequent examples. The formation of a 
criminal class and the increase of the practical power 
of the police are affecting materially our idea of the 
freedom of the subject. 

3. Another set of examples of the decay of the 
idea of freedom is to be found in the manifold doc- 
trines of protectionism ; such as the protective tariff, 
subsidies, pensions, national improvements, and gener- 
ally all the paternal functions of government that are 
inseparable from centralization. The doctrine of free 
trade that "captivated the imagination of the last gen- 
eration is now discredited." Similar to these, too, is the 

30 . 



multitude of laws restricting the right of contract — 
labor laws, mining laws, insurance departments, bank- 
ing supervision, licensing of professions, licensing 
saloons, the oleomargarine laws, the extension of 
the theory of national taxation, income taxation, with 
progressive and inquisitorial features ; interstate 
commerce regulation, municipal ordinances relating to 
measurements of property, the assessment for improve- 
ments of manifold kinds, the assessment of benefits 
for opening streets, etc. ; the laws relating to eleva- 
tors, fire-escapes ; and generally the growth of bureau- 
cracy in cities. 

4. The above mostly relate to property or con- 
tract, but there is a similar growth of law restricting 
personal liberty. Such laws relate, for instance, to 
marriage licenses requiring minute statements of past 
life ; to commitments to Houses of Correction ; com- 
mitment to insane asylums, particularly those which 
render the commitment easy, and transfer the judicial 
finding from a jury to a judge ; the forcible measure- 
ment and photography of criminal suspects or convicts ; 
compulsory education, often including compulsory 
medical examination ; compulsory vaccination and 
municipal quarantine. 

5, The same tendency may be illustrated in the 
history of political parties. It was remarked by Brice 
(Vol. II. 18) that no American party had ever pro- 
fessed itself the champion of authority and order, — 
" that would be a damaging profession." This, how- 
ever, has changed since the campaign of 1896 in which 
the Republican party went boldly before the people as 
the representative of authority, as it had been before 
the representative of centralization. So far from 

31 



damaQ;-ing the party, this position attracted much of 
the strenorth that elected its candidate. 

The old Liberty Party has become the Imperial 
Party. It has undertaken to protect slavery abroad ; 
while the Democratic Party is engaged in disfranchising 
the neo-ro at home. 



'& 



6. No more conclusive proof of the decrease of 
the spirit of liberty need be asked than is found in the 
condition of such States as Pennsylvania which are 
entirely subservient in their political organization to 
the wishes of a single man. No one who has not had 
business with state departments, political conventions 
or semi-political conpanies or banks can have a suffi- 
cient idea of the reality and scope of this subjection. 
It affects every political agency, it determines every 
platform, it nominates every candidate, it controls 
public funds, it names the governor and controls him 
when elected, it determines the action of one party 
altogether and of the other in large part. It has par- 
alyzed legislative action, it has deprived the Comnion- 
wealth of a seat in the Senate. The people know this, 
but do not care to chanee it. 



t> 



7. The loss of liberty as well as of the desire for 
it naturally appears most strongly in the condition of 
the workine classes. The consolidation of manufact- 
uring and transportation interests has more and more 
tended to bring the opportunity of work under the 
control of a few men. The liberty of the individual 
operator has been sacrificed for the advantages of 
consolidation. On the other hand the workman in 
order to counteract the current tendencies has surren- 
dered his libertv to the trades' unions, and is ordered 



out and ordered back widiout regard to his individual 
preference or advantage. 

S. It is, of course, apparent that all these changes 
are the effects of a vast tide setting from liberty to gov- 
ernment, from idealism to realism, from individualism 
to collectivism. They are the indicia of a mechanical 
and reactionary period and affect all our ideas of the 
forms under which we live. Government is now not 
so much the expression of the will of the people, 
havinor its orio-in and sanction in the consent of the 
governed, but it is regarded from the " positive " point 
of view — historically as a great fact, scientifically as 
an evolutionary result, politically as a necessary 
machine. Order is superior to right or, as might be 
said, order is right. A sceptical analysis has examined 
natural rights and has disposed of them as the 
imaginations of an unscientific aofe. So an honored 
Senator of the United States''^ lone aeo described the 
fundamental law of the land as made up of "glittering 
generalities." It was the realist who spoke and 
America's great idealist replied " Glittering general- 
ities ? Splendid ubiquities !" But it is the realist who 
eoverns and the crradual trend of o-overnmental tonns 
is away from the idealism that gave them birth. 

This may be seen in the change in the adminis- 
tration of law. Formerly cases were few, reports 
were few, lawyers were few. Practice was leisurely ; 
time was taken to study the law and lawyers really 
formed a learned profession. Now cases have multi- 
plied so that the question is not how they ought to be 
decided; but how to get them decided at all. The 
judicial system is a method of getting the business 

•*'* Rufus Choate. % 

33 



done, and the leading lawyer is no longer the leader 
in thought or patriotic action, but the one who tries 
the most cases most successfully. The form has over- 
powered the spirit. The necessary effect of this is the 
lessening importance of precedent and the growing 
importance of the judge. Formerly the judge was 
the mouthpiece of the law ; now the tendency is for the 
judge to decide the case "on its own facts." The 
separation betwen bench and bar widens ; the judge 
magnifies his office. 

9. A similar sweep is seen in religion. This 
cannot be proved and will be denied, but the evidence 
is manifold. It includes the growth of form in all 
churches, the tendency toward the Catholic Church — 
that greatest of religious machines ; the trrowth of 
ritualism in Episcopal churches ; the hardening of 
creed in Presbyterian churches and the separation of 
the church from the working people. Sah^ation now 
cometh by armies. The clatter of the vast machine 
drowns the still small voice. The modern psalmist 
carries no gentle harp to charm away the evil 
spirit, but would exorcise him away with a big bass 
drum. 

10. So in the character of the people, every- 
thing is being swept more and more into one form. A 
century and a half ago the various colonies had 
distinctive characters, or displayed in themselves a 
want of homogeneity. But time, the mingling of 
population, ease of transport, the decay of the older 
sects, the vast immigration and centralization have 
made the states more and more alike. Fifty years 
aofo a North and a South were left. The Civil War was 
the first step toward the obliteration of this distinction. 

34 



Still greater are the new forces introduced by the 
transition from afj^ricultural to industrial life. Here 
under the effects of machinery the monotony increases 
still faster. Vaste hordes pass daily from one end of 
our cities to the other, differing only in the fact that 
during the day they have watched a different loom or 
turned a different crank. The uniformity of American 
life has become commonplace among observers"'^ but 
■evidence now appears of the first preparation for the 
•change from " happy uniformity " to unhappy and com- 
plex intensity. But this has not come yet : the ten- 
dencies so far are clearly towards the suppression of 
the individual into an "average man." This agrees with 
the other changes in that it is away from freedom and 
idealism towards collectivism and realism. 

"Fairest fairies ! leave your dances 
You distinguish man from man 
All of old made, now be mould-made 
On one dull mechanic plan."'^'^ 

1 1. We have observed the tendency of absolutism 
to support itself by a fatalistic philosophy. We have 
also sketched the growth of absolutism in America and 
have seen its connection with the trend toward 
democracy. We may expect therefore to find some 
similar philosophic basis for " the tyranny of the major- 
ity " as we have found for the tyranny of the one. 
For, as is generally agreed, the constant assertion of 
the will of the majority and the general acquiescence 
therein naturally produce a tendency to believe that 
the majority must be right. ^^ Mr. Brice has an interest- 
ing chapter on what is aptly termed the " fatalism of 

'« Brice, 11, 662. 
♦0 H. A. Kennedy. 
*'See Brice 11, 327-329. 

35 



the multitude." For it is as truly fatalism as was the 
doctrine of non-resistance to the divine rio-ht of 
Kings. 

There have always been philosophers to justify 
the tyranny of one, as Hegel on the basis of an ideal- 
istic fatalism deified Napoleon. So there will always 
be philosophers to justify the tyranny of the many. 
Public opinion and the will of the majority are deified 
under the names of manifest destiny or Providential 
mission, or they are justified by maxims of fatalism, — 
Vox Popiili Vox Dei, for the State; as formerly, Sccurns 
jitdicat orbis ferrarinn, for the Church. Such a crite- 
rion obviously looks upon the world from the stand- 
point of socialism. It tends to destroy individuality. 
Intuidon, faith, conscience, independence are destroyed 
or supplied by education, decree, law, obedience. 
Obedience, remarks Brice, describing this aspect ot 
America, "is to most sweeter than independence." 
The political philosophy underlying these changes 
obviously tends away from idealism to materialism. 
Carried to its lo^jical conclusion it is such in effect. 
The only finality is the weight of the mass. An 
example of this may be cited in the materialistic 
philosophy of Draper in his Intellectual Development 
of Europe. The History of Man is to him a develop- 
ment of resistless law. Evolution brings forth truth 
from intellectual collisions and from the melting down 
of opinion, like metal out of a furnace. "Whatever 
cannot stand that ordeal must submit to its fate. Lies 
and imposture, no matter how powerfully sustained, 
must prepare to depart. In that supreme tribunal 
(the opinion of the race) man may place implicit con- 
fidence. Even though philosophically it is far from 

36 



absolute, it is the hiorhest criterion vouchsafed to him 
and from its decision he has no appeal. ''' ''' '^ 
How strong- is our persuasion that we are in the right 
Avhen public opinion is with us."^- 

IV. It cannot certainly be determined from the 
above that the moribund tendency of liberty will finally 
prove fatal. The Hegelian theorem declares that it 
must rise again, purified into a higher ciegree. 

Indeed all Americans feel that if liberty is lost in 
America it is lost for all the world, . It is thouQ^ht that 
America was settled at a Providential time and in a 
Providential way. There is no place left in the earth 
for another such experiment. Old world forces or the 
fiercer forces of nature so predominate in all parts of 
the world as to preclude the possibility that civiliza- 
tion, at least in this cycle, should ever see new pioneers 
settle a new land of liberty. Freedom has taken her 
last trek and the battle must presently begin. 

The circle of returning liberty, of which we have so 
far spoken, is yet of undetermined orbit ; since colonial 
times its movement has been continuous, though not 
constant. But there are within it certain smaller oscil- 
lations, in which the spirit of the people has moved 
away from liberty towards conquest, or z'ice versa. 
These appear in the various wars of America, and an 
examination of them develops a number of suggestions 
about the method of the general adv^ance of liberty. 

America has had say six wars : The French-Indian 
War, the Revolution, the War of 1S12, the Mexican 
War, the Civil War and the Cuban-Philippine War. 
The War of 1S12, however, was waged practically for 
freedom on the sea, as that of 1776 for freedom on 

*'- Int. Dev. Europe, II 236. I 20, 22, 355. 



land. Its aim makes it logically a continuation of the 
War of 1776, and we may say that America has had 
five wars. On examination of their causes we find that 
they fall into two classes, wars of conquest and wars of 
liberty. All wars of national import may, no doubt, be 
considered as beloneine to one or the other of these ; as 
imperialistic or revolutionary, extensive or intensive, 
of expansion or independence, of centralization or de- 
centralization. The wars of America show a strange 
alternation in their ofeneric character. First, the Seven 
Years' War, a war of races for the control of North 
America, essentially imperialistic and dynastic ; then 
the War of Independence, revolutionary and dynamic ; 
then the INIexican War, a race war of expansion, dynas- 
tic, extensive ; then the Civil War of Liberation, inten- 
sive, dynamic ; then the Spanish War, again an impe- 
rialistic race war of expansion. Is this mere chance, 
or is there some deep reason in the nature of man or 
the constitution of society that swings a nation like a 
pendulum from centralization to decentralization ? Let 
us examine the general relations of these wars. 

First. — There is a general connection between the 
three wars of expansion. 

The first of these, as a branch of the Seven Years' 
War, connects America with the great contest for 
supremacy between France and England. Its colonial 
name, the French-Indian War, commemorates the 
racial character of that long struggle in the same way 
as the names of the earlier colonial wars — King Wil- 
liam's War, Queen Anne's War and King George's 
War, which were episodes in the same great struggle 
— commemorate its imperial character. It was the 
expansion of material forces, the victory of the stronger 

38 



race. When this had been once been made plain by 
the decisive victories of the Seven Years' War the 
domination of the whole western continent by the 
same forces became sufficiently probable to define the 
course of history for the ensuing period. It was easy, 
therefore, for de Tocqueville to prophecy a war with 
Mexico and the absorption of Texas. He had but to 
compare the contact already had between the Ameri- 
cans and men of Latin race (I, 447, 448) and to observe 
the destructive influence of highly civilized nations on 
others less so. The only point of contact which the 
Union had upon a country of that kind was " with the 
Empire of Mexico, and it is thence," he said, "that 
serious hostilities may be expected to arise." (I, 218.) 
Even as against the French Canadians the English 
were masters of commerce and manufacture, and a 
similar fact was noticeable in Louisiana. The case of 
Texas was still more strikinor. •' In the course of the 
last few years," he writes (1835) 

"The Anglo-Americans have penetrated this province, 
which is still thinly peopled, they purchase land, they produce 
the commodities of the country and supplant the original pop- 
ulation. It may easily be foreseen that, if Mexico takes no 
steps to check this change, the province of Texas will very 
shortly cease to belong to that government." {fd., 448.) 

When the boundary of the United States had once 
been extended so as to include the whole ot the 
present Pacific coast line, those who estimated the 
expansive power of race saw at once the approaching 
contest and the seizure by England's most formidable 
rival of the gateways of Eastern commerce. Three 
years after the Mexican cession. Creasy, on whom the 
suggestions of de Tocqueville had not been lost, 
wrote : 

39 



"The importance of the power of the United States 
being then firmly planted along the Pacific, applies not only 
to the New World but to the Old. Opposite to San Francisco, 
on the coast of that ocean, lie the wealthy but decrepit 
empires of China and Japan. Numerous groups of islets stud 
the larger part of the intervening sea, and form convenient 
stepping-stones for the progress of commerce or ambition. 
The intercourse of traffic between these ancient Asiatic mon- 
archies, and the young Anglo-American Republic, must be 
rapid and extensive. Any attempt of the Chinese or Japanese 
rulers to check it will only accelerate an armed collision. The 
American will either buy or force his way. Between such 
populations as that of China and Japan on the one side, and 
that of the United States on the other, the former haughty, 
formal and insolent, and the latter bold, intrusive and unscru- 
pulous, causes of quarrel must, sooner or later, arise. The 
results of such a quarrel cannot be doubted. America will 
scarcely imitate the forbearance shown by England at the end 
of our late war with the Celestial Empire ; and the conquest 
of China and Japan by the fleets and armies of the United 
States are events which many now living are likely to witness." 

Soon these prophecies began to be fulfilled and 
one year after thev were written Prof. Creasy added a 
note : 

"And now. May, 1852, a powerful squadron of American 
warships has been sent to Japan for the ostensible purpose of 
securing protection for the cre^vs of American vessels ship- 
wrecked on the Japanese coast and also evidently for important 
ulterior purposes. "•^^ 

Oa July 7, 1853, Commodore Perry steamed into 
the Bay of Yedo and forced the treaty which is rightly 
regarded as the opening of the East. 

In the period imrjiediately following the Mexican 
War, began also the various filibustering expeditions 

^■' Decisive Battles of the World, 41st. EJ., 462.11. 

40 



agfainst Cuba^^ and the movement for the annexation 
of Hawaii. Both of these islands have at last been 
taken after half a century of prophecy and disclaimer. 
Enouorh has now been said to indicate that America's 
three imperial wars were the result of the same gen- 
eral cause, the expansion of the race and were the 
expression of material rather than moral forces. 

Second. — We turn now to the wars which illus- 
trate the other class of forces, the Revolution and the 
Civil War, and here we observe in like manner that 
the intensive wars are connected in their causes as 
were the extensive wars ; but that they are the result 
of ideal or moral rather than of material forces. 

It would be easy to compare the English Revolu- 
tion of 1688 with the American of 1776. The same 
forces of liberty which produced the revolution against 
the absolutism of the Stuarts, produced in the next 
century the revolution against the imperialism of the 
Georges. But the newer world and a newer century 
broadened and deepened the ideas on which the revo- 
lution rested. The first asserted the political rights of 
Englishmen. The second the "inherent" rights of 
man. The Declaration ot Rio-ht was constitutional, 
the Declaration of Independence was fundamental. 

Broadly speaking, the Civil War in America was 
the result of the belief that all men are created free 
and equal. The Declarations of the Revolution were 
from the beginning plainly seen to be antagonistic to 
slavery. But it was supposed that slavery might 
gradually die out or be thereafter done away with. 
This is evident from such passages as the bitter irony 

^^Lopez Expeditions and see President Tyler's Procl. Aug. ii, 1S49, Prest. 
Pierce's Proc. , May 31, 1S54, Polk's ofiter in 1848 of $1,000,000 for the island. 

41 



against slavery in the original draft of the Declaration, 
the Ordinance of 1787 and the provision in the Con- 
stitution that the importation of slaves should not be 
prohibited by Congress before 1808. It is not neces- 
sary to say much on this point, for almost a century 
of our political history is principally made up of the 
contest between slavery and freedom. On looking 
back, no reason can be found except the perversity of 
human affairs that the contest should not have been 
ultimately decided within the forms of government. 
But the example is important and ominous as showing 
that our country failed to settle except by war its first 
great contest between constitutional right and social 
wrono". 

Third. — Not only are the wars of the same class 
connected by having their roots in the same causes, 
but each war is by a sort of reaction induced by the 
preceding war of the opposite class. Thus the Revo- 
lution was induced by the Seven Years' War. The 
Mexican War by the Revolution. The Rebellion by 
the Mexican War. The Spanish War by the Rebel- 
lion. All of the wars were the outburst of long 
smouldering fires. The wars of freedom have waited 
while imperial protection was needed ; the wars of 
imperialism have been held back until the decision of 
internal questions of liberty should be reached. So 
that the attention and effort of the country, being 
periodically devoted to the overmastering questions of 
the time, have oscillated between the opposing tend- 
encies. 

(a) The Revolution was induced by the Seven 
Years' War. This is now universally understood ; and, 

42 



indeed, was so probable in the nature of things that in 
the words of Parkman : 

" More than one clear eye saw at the middle of the last 
century that the subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt 
of the British colonies. So long as an active and enterpris- 
ing enemy threatened their borders they could not break with 
the Mother country, because they needed her help."^'' 

" With the triumph of Wolf on the Heights of Abraham 
began the History of the United States. "^'' 
But imperiaHsm, Hke Hberty, falls into the Hege- 
lian antithesis of self-destruction and in the " most 
glorious and most triumphant of England's wars " 
was involved the loss of her fairest colonies. The 
principle of disintegration ripened rapidly. The war 
was its flower. 

" The war," wrote John Adams, ''was not the Revolu- 
tion. The Revolution was effected in the minds of the people 
from 1760 to 1774, before a drop of blood was shed.^" 

(b) The Mexican War was rendered possible by 
the Revolution. For the Revolution created the 
nation, and nations, not colonies or confederations, 
make wars of conquest. Such has been the general 
order of history. First freedom, then conquest. 
Herein also appears the contradictory nature of the 
Revolution, which in its origin was the work of decen- 
tralizingr agencies, but became in its effects a central- 
izing power. It agrees with this, that the forces 
which were most powerful in provoking the Mexican 
War were the latent material forces of imperialism 
and not of liberty. These forces showed the class to 
which they belonged by the grounds on which the 

■*^ Montcalm & Wolf Into. 5. See a number of these prophecies collected in 
Lecky's " England in XVII I Century," III, p. 29I. 
^* Green. History of the Eng. People. IV, 193. 
^' Adams to Jetferson. Jeff. Wks., VI, 492. 

43 



arguments for slavery were based. They were the usual 
fatalistic arguments of imperialism — politically, the 
supremacy of the sovereign power of the state over 
moral law ; religiously, the beneficent providence that 
authorizes evil for the good of the victim ; historically, 
the destiny of the superior race. 

(c) The Civil War was induced by the Mexican 
War. This may be now regarded as generally agreed, 
and the result was apprehended by many a half cen- 
tury ago. In fact, from the Mexican War to the 
Civil War, our political history is principally a contest 
over the extension or restriction of slavery in the 
newly acquired territory. It intensified the divergence 
of interests between the slave and free States, and out 
of the contest emereed the forces that wagged the War 
of the Rebellion. The foreign war made ready for 
the Civil War, as the earlier foreign war had made 
ready for the Revolution. Nor has it taken long for 
the forces of the Revolution to be marshalled. From 
the Treaty of Paris (1763) to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, was thirteen years ; from the Mexican 
War (1848) to the Rebellion was thirteen years. But 
after the country has been shattered by internal con- 
test, a longer period is necessary before it ventures 
in a foreign war. From the Revolution (1776) to the 
War of 181 2 is thirty-six years. From the Civil War 
(186 1) to the Spanish War (1898) is thirty-seven 
years. 

The Mexican War, which began as a war of exten- 
sion, had become intensive in its result. The Civil 
War, however, bears a double and confusing aspect ; 
for centralization and freedom on one side were 
opposed to independence and slavery on the other. 

44 

L.ofC. 



(d) The Civil War prepared the way for the war 
with Spain. For some time after the Mexican War 
there was no effectual endeavor to increase by war the 
territory of the United States at the expense of the 
Latin races. The attempt on Cuba was discounte- 
nanced, and even at the close of the Civil War the 
acquisition of San Domingo was not favored. Before 
the Rebellion the preliminary contests with slavery 
dissuaded from conquest, and after the Civil War the 
country had still to decide the questions of internal 
policy which that war had raised. Still the effect of 
that v/ar was the elimination of the dividing line of 
slavery. It unified the country, and unification is a 
prerequisite to conquest. But not only did the Civil 
War prepare for foreign conquest by settling the prin- 
cipal internal question of American politics, but it pre- 
pared for it in a way peculiarly fitted to the end. For 
all the questions of the war and those which succeeded 
it, reconstruction, the Mexican invasion, the tariff, the 
contested election of 1876, were so decided as to favor 
national sovereignty and executive prerogative at the 
expense of State rights and individual freedom. At 
the same time, the effect of the war was the introduc- 
tion into politics of an extreme form of commercialism 
and the growth of a powerful plutocracy. All these 
things are elements in the formation of a democratic 
imperialism. And thus it appears that the Civil War, 
like the earlier ones, has reacted against its spirit. 
Out of a war for freedom there have developed ten- 
dencies of the opposite character. In war, as in peace, 
freedom destroys itself. 

(e) A similar step in the argument would carry us 
into the future. After the Spanish-Philippine War, 

45 



what ? If the analogies of past history hold, it should 
be followed within fifteen or twenty years by internal 
dissensions. But the period, of course, cannot be 
determined in advance. It is sufficient to enquire 
whether the conditions of the last war are so like those 
of earlier years as to warrant a similar inference for 
an indefinite future. 

We find, as in the Mexican War, a conquest 
made by the Executive against the will of a minority 
politically powerless, but morally influential. Now, as 
then, that minority is strongest in New England. It 
is not to be forgotten that among the opponents of 
the Mexican War was born the Liberty Party which 
brought on the Civil War. Then, as now, the war was 
defended on the same high grounds of destiny and 
Christianity ; and, as then, it was answered that the 
real motive was the entrenchment of the slaveholder, 
so now it is answered that the war is for the benefit of 
the plutocrat. Now, as then, the war bids fair to 
emphasize the divergence of interest and of classes. 
Like the Mexican War it promises wealth, but threatens 
labor. The attitude of the workmen's and sino-le 
tax^"* papers is sufficient proof of this. 

The change of both the great parties shows the 
lines being drawn for a new battle. The purchase of 
the Republican Party by plutocracy is coincident with 
the capture of the Democratic Party by socialism. 

From the above theories it becomes possible to 
prognosticate in general terms the probable course of 
history in America in the immediate future. 

To prophecy certainly a definite course for the 
future would not only be to arrogate to the science of 

*** Such as the Public, of Chicago, New Era, etc. 

46 



history a certitude that it can never attain, but it would 
be, also, to indulge in a fatalism morally as misleading 
as that which has so often misconstrued the past. No 
study of history can be adequate which overlooks 
either the ideal or the material, or which reduces the 
affairs of men either to blind fate or wandering 
chance. The personal element that has so often 
averted or effected revolution is a continual but unde- 
termined element. The Revolution of 1688, for in- 
stance, was the achievement of statesmen, rather than 
a popular demonstration ; but it proved one of the 
most effectual of revolutions in fixing the rights of 
British subjects. 

But tendencies are the necessary results of facts, 
and may be absolutely predicated. It may, therefore, 
be said, without fear of contradiction, that imperialism 
or some form of government which tends away from 
liberty (for which the current name may stand as well 
as any other) is a necessary tendency arising from the 
attainment of liberty ; and that in some form and to 
some degree such tendency will be accepted by the 
American people as well as by other free countries ; that, 
in Hegelian phrase, the taste of the new events will be 
bitter, and that they will tend to destroy and actually 
may destroy the liberty that gave them being. 

To what extent this current will carry us, depends 
on the second and undetermined element' in history. 
Will the destinies of the country be committed at the 
critical period to men of liberal principles as well as 
firm conviction who will hold the ship of state into the 
wind ? or to drifters and re-actionaries ? History is 
filled with the accounts of countries wrecked by gov- 
ernment. Of modern examples, the most glaring is 

47 



that of Imperial Spain. From present indications there 
is, however, no adequate method of drawing any 
certain augury on this point, and in a "fierce democ- 
racy " hke America the most probable inference 
seems to be that the sweep of natural action and re- 
action will be freer and less likely to be impeded by 
accident or controlled by statesmanship than has been 
the case in the less democratic countries of Europe. 
The tendency is to elect the representatives of the 
current re-action and to regard all great oppositions 
of interest as " irrepressible conflicts." 

Actual opinion on this point will no doubt be 
determined more by individual disposition than by 
philosophic standpoint. But both to the fatalist and 
to the pessimist who look for the destruction of liberty 
in this country, we may quote the optimistic prophecy 
of the great American fatalist and idealist : 

" Straight into double band 
The victors divide : 
Half for freedom strike and stand 

The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side " *^ 

*' Emerson, Ode to Channing. 



48 



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